


According to Plan

by CommonEvilMastermind



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: A Nice Thing for Solavellan Trash, F/M, FIx It, Fluff, Happily Ever Fucking After, Lavellan Fixes Everything, Post Tresspasser, This Is the Ending We Deserve, i needed this okay, one hundred percent fluff, only fluff, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5220578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing went right when it came to Ellara Lavellan. Since the first moment he had seen her there, chained and unconscious in the Haven prison, she was the broken axle, the missing pin, the wild avalanche crashing down on his thoughts and dreams and skin.</p><p>Here is a fluffy story in which Ellara Lavellan fixes everything and passes judgement on her beloved, her Solas, her Fen'Harel. My own personal head canon for Trespasser. The happy ending we all want and will never ever get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	According to Plan

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down to write and this came out. I needed it - maybe you did too.
> 
> I'm not sorry.
> 
> 11/20 - little edits for fluidity.

Everything was going according to plan – except, of course, for Ellara Lavellan.

This had stopped surprising him a long time ago.

Nothing, nothing went right when it came to Ellara Lavellan. Since the first moment he had seen her there, chained and unconscious in the Haven prison, she was the broken axle, the missing pin, the wild avalanche crashing down on his thoughts and dreams and his very skin.

She was never part of the plan – not the anchor, not the Herald, not the Inquisition, not Skyhold. Not the pressure in his chest, the frantic pounding when she flew onwards into battle.

Solas wondered wildly when it had changed. Was there a day, a moment, a mark in the sand showing when the rhythm of his thoughts turned from _keep the anchor safe_ to _keep the Inquisitor safe_ to _keep Ellara safe_?

He sometimes wished for all his power, just so he could turn it to keeping her from harm.

Then he slammed down his books and walked far away from Skyhold until he could throw ice-arrows at the rams and shout for his own impotence.

It never seemed to help.

He would come back to the castle, his castle, the bones of the mountain called up to the sky where he had once split the world in two. And she would be there, on the battlements, chestnut hair red in the afternoon light. She would smile at him and the shadows from her face would lift and he would be lost –

Because this world, this horrible nightmare of a world was _never supposed to be._ He had to fix it, to sweep it all away in a flood of raw chaos until the universe could right itself again.

Except the weeks passed into months and Ellara Lavellan became as real to him as the crystal melodies of Arlathan. She changed everything. But she couldn’t.

“I have distracted you from your duty,” he said to her, soft and low. It was a lie. She was duty incarnate, bright fire wrapped in Inquisition armor, and every line of her was set to saving the world. He was the one lost, distracted, called to the hearth that was her smile, tempted – so tempted – to lay down his burdens and rest there for all that remained of eternity.

She spat at him when he left and wept. Every tear was a dagger in his soul and he was glad for it. All he touched, he destroyed. She was a force of creation. Where he went, he left chaos in his wake. Where she followed, she left a mended world.

He wrenched away when he felt her warmth on his heart. It was too late. She was everything he should have been, everything he could not be. 

She had not been good at chess when they met, but Ellara Lavellan learned quickly. Deep in the farthest corner of his heart, deep in the night and the loaming dark, Solas could not help but hope. He could not stop, he would not stop - duty and death lay before him as dreadful lovers, intertwined. Could she in wild, bright creation, be the knife that slipped through the silver tangle of his plans?

Deep in the dark, he hoped so.

It was different in the harshness of the light. His rebellion grew under his fingertips, a mutilated twin of her Inquisition. She sought order out of chaos; he sought to bring the chaos flooding in again.

In the daytime, standing amid maps and markers and blood-fresh memories, it was easy. His people came to him in waves, broken and beggared and bartering that anything he had to offer was better than the stench of the slums, the white hot hunger of a starving child. They came for his memories, his stories and songs, the pictures he built in the light and the air of a time when the Elves were everything. Magical and whole.

In the brightness of day, he could forget the terrible mercy that was the love of Ellara Lavellan.

But at night, they wandered the same dreams. He watched her, a compulsion as necessary as breathing. She cursed the distant wolf and threw stones at him, called for him and cried to him, sang him songs and told him tales and wove their memories into moonlight.

Now the game they played was the highest of stakes. All the world was the chessboard. He the black king, she the queen of white – their armies hidden in shadow, pieces unnumbered, ever in play.

Solas fought her with everything in his power. Only in the dark could he admit how he wanted her to win.

In the end, he was wrong. Again. Three thousand years of life and another four spent sleeping and the Dread Wolf came undone by a quickling girl in a quickling world and he fell to the ground and didn't know whether to laugh or to rage. Nothing went according to plan. But this was Ellara Lavellan. He should expect nothing less.

As he knelt in the soft meadow grass, he was overwhelmed by wonder. This was no checkmate, no bright queen come with spell and sword to bring him from his throne. She had once again refused to play by the rules of the game.

Instead, she had created a world.

There was no trace of Fen’Harel in the man that now knelt in the dew. There was the power in his veins, the cold, hard armor, the wolf pelt slung around his chest. But only Solas, simple Solas, wanderer, scholar, and friend to spirits, lifted the dirt to his nose and breathed.

And it was _alive._

Everything was alive. The song he thought dead, destroyed and forgotten, thrummed through the very bones of the earth. The grayscale world in which he had awoken now teemed with color. His eyes, storm blue, saw children playing in the distance. With his other eyes, he saw the spirits as they danced among them.

This was _impossible_.

A small valley in a misty glen, bright in its duality. The material interlaced gently with the spirit. He reached for the Veil, his dread delighted child. It was gone. The world he had so horribly maimed was whole. He breathed in with lungs that caught, and it was home. The winds of Elvhenan. His soul, raging, divided, slid back together quietly. No great fanfare. No magic blast. The world tilted just on its axis and everything was right once again.

No. Everything was right like it had never been.

He did not know how long he wandered, leaving bits of armor in his wake. He lost his gauntlets when he knelt to caress a small violet, marveling in the richness of its glow. A spirit wisp darted, delighting in the dancing light from his shoulder pauldron. He left it in the grass, a poor offering for the harm he had done.

He lost his boots on the banks of a creek, overwhelmed by the need to feel the clear water dancing over his feet. It sang a song as it swept along, a lilting tune he hadn’t heard since childhood. The Dread Wolf wanted to dance in the song of the stream.

But he stopped, torn by the impossibility. This couldn’t truly be – this was a dream within the Fade, an old memory come to life of the world before he brought it crashing down. But the water was crystal and ice on his skin. His heart told him he could not be dreaming.

He would not dare to dream of something bright as this.

There were people gathered, low buildings climbing on a rolling hill. He could not face them. He followed his stream to a small copse of trees where little birds – small fluffs of spirit and feather – perched on his shoulder without fear. One tugged at the wolfskin he wore, teasing out fur, soft and warm, to line the inside of its nest. He smiled and lay the dead thing on the ground, for them to have their fill. The burden he had slung like a broken bandolier would do better for these creatures than it ever had for him.

His breastplate weighted on his skin, heavy and hot in the soft spring sun. He left it without another thought. Bare feet in the new grass, he was wolf no more – a simple mage in leggings and tunic, heart wider than the sun.

He don’t know how long he wandered before she found him.

He walking, stupefied, on the edge of a small lake that teemed with life and spirit alike when he saw her. Her hair was longer, crowned with braids, and her eyes no less bright. She walked without a whisper, like a goddess, like a queen, completely whole despite the sleeve that lay empty at her side. She must be then a goddess - one of laughter and creation and light. He sank to his knees, to the sun-warmed ground, wonder and shame rising in equal measure in his throat, and bowed his head to Ellara Lavellan.

One heartbeat. Two. A rustle of fabric and her knees touched his own. “ _Lo, vhenan.”_ She denied him his piety, his obedience, and lifted his eyes with a hand to his cheek. “Please do not kneel to me,” she whispered and her voice cracked on the words. His goddess was a woman, bright and broken, with burdens creased forever in her forehead, in the corners of her eyes. He would bow to her, worship her, give her his soul in truth - but her hand shook where it gently touched his skin.

He knew, he _knew_ better than any other soul, the burden of divinity when it comes unasked. He knew that awful look in her eyes, the sickening lurch of loss when one more person sees you as beyond yourself. As something more.

He knew the woman inside the Herald’s skin and kissed her before she could fade away into the mist.

She gasped as his lips met her own and clung to him, one handed, white-knuckled in his tunic. His arms wrapped around her, folding her in, protecting and protected and never again alone. He shuddered as she kissed him and there was wet on his cheeks – her tears or his own.

They held each other for a very long time.

“How?” he asked her then, bright and broken, the word cracking in its impossibility. “How?”

She smiled and his heart skipped a beat and he stopped her to taste the wild joy that flitted across her lips.

“I’ll show you.” She tugged him up, off the ground. His shins were wet and wonderfully muddy. He held her hand, her only hand, as she led him through the world that was an impossibility.

There, in the trees, something flashing gold and green. Solas felt it before he saw it, knowing its power like a second name. “An eluvian?” He stepped forward slowly, eyes devouring every detail. He did not let go of her hand.

It was an eluvian. And it was open, wide open. Beyond the metal frame were the swirling whirls and eddies of the Fade. And another, placed beside it, mirrored and mirroring, was showing the deep twilight of the mortal world.

“You opened the doors – “ His mind spun, unsettled, unknowing. The solution was too simple, too easy-

“This is a part of the Crossroads,” she explained. Her voice was light and grounding. “A pocket place between the worlds – not Thedas. Not the Fade. It is both and neither. So we opened the doors, one way only – let them both flood in, mix and eddy. Just as you were planning to do, only more gently.”

“Was there anything here, when the forces met?” The two poles of energy, rushing towards each other after centuries, millennia, apart – “Did anything survive?”

“I was here,” she confirmed and he hissed, fearing and furious at the risk she took. “I survived.”

“You could have been killed! Unraveled by forces beyond your control, unwritten-“

“It was worth the risk,” she said and her voice was sharper than he had known it. “And if I had failed, you would have unraveled the entire world anyway.”

“I – yes,” he confessed, knowing it was horribly, terribly true. The silence stretched between them. The spirit birds were singing and waves lapped in the lake.

 “What now?” he asked, feared and frightened and finally free.

“We build this place. Make it grow. I’ve been doing what I can but my resources are stretched-“

He turned to her and sank to his knees in the sun-warmed grass. He bowed his head, baring the back of his neck. “Lady – Inquisitor Lavellan,” he said and the words fell from his lips like rain. “I offer you my surrender. My people are yours, to do with as you may.”

“You can bring them here, if you wish.” The pads of her fingertips were cool on his head. “All who need a home are welcome in this place.”

“I will,” he murmured and he did not look up at her. She did not want him to kneel, but he must. “I offer myself to your judgment. Do with me as you will.”

“As I will?” she murmured, and the tone shifted in her voice. “And who kneels at my feet? Solas? The mighty Fen’Harel?”

“Both.” Never had he felt so vulnerable. Never had he felt less afraid. “In this, we are one. We are in your hands.”

“ _Vhenan -”_ she breathed.

“No!” he begged, short and sharp and pleading. “Do not spare me! I meant to tear the world apart, to break everything - _everything_. I do not want your mercy. Give me only justice, I ask you.”

“My justice?” and her voice was dark. “Shall you be another of my conquests – my pet spy? My researcher? My jester?”

“Any,” he said softly. “And all. My life is in your hands.”

“Here then is my justice –” She broke off and her dark voice gained a smile. “What is your true name?”

“I was born Solas of the Northern Sea.”

“Solas of the Northern Sea. Fen’Harel – Dread Wolf, the Great Betrayer, Shadow Stalker, King of Lies. For your crimes, I sentence you to a life of service to the Elvhen people. To the spirits. To all the small and powerless and oppressed. You would have destroyed this world – now you must build it anew. This is my judgment. The punishment for your crime.”

“ _Vhenan,_ ” he pleaded. He could not meet her eyes. “Ellara-“

“You wish a greater sentence? You would rather die?” His nod was small but present. “Dying is easy, _vhenan._ Living is much, much harder.” She drew in a breath and it caught in her throat. “Solas of the Northern Sea, I sentence you to a life. For your crimes, you will rule alongside me, here in this new land, as a Keeper and a Lord. And-” Her hand was under his chin, raising his face to meet her gaze. She stood tall and bright. There were tears streaming down her face. “And as my husband. If you would have me.”

“This is your judgment?” he whispered, and his voice was thick in his throat.

She nodded. “For all except the last bit. That one, I am asking. Solas-“

He surged to his feet and kissed his name from her lips, holding her so tight that he could feel she was shaking in his arms. He was crying – they were both crying, and laughing, and kissing the tears from the other’s cheeks with painful, joyous relief. They kissed and murmured lovers’ words until the light faded to darkness. He took her hand – her only hand – and they walked together to the hill with the low buildings.

Their future was waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> You may or may not get more of this sap. Because I love weddings and babies and how messy happily-ever-afters can actually get. Do you want more sap? You should tell me. I can't read your mind, you know.


End file.
